National Affairs: The Admiral’s Story

For four years and a month Rear Admiral Husband E. Kimmel had waited to tell his story of the Pearl Harbor disaster. Now he had his chance.

White-haired at 63, he was still burly, still erect. Going to the witness chair, he walked into the glare of cameramen’s klieg lights with the air of a man expecting complete vindication. For two days, with the flat authority of the quarterdeck, he hammered away at the central theme of his defense—that the Navy had kept him so inadequately informed that he had been “misled” into believing an attack on Hawaii was “not imminent or probable.”

Like a man recalling an oft-repeated dream, he speculated that the disaster might have been turned into a victory if he had been properly advised: he would have “gone to sea” with the fleet, stood ready to ambush the Japanese task force.

Then came the crossexamination. The Navy’s famed Nov. 27 message to Pearl Harbor had begun with the words: “This is … a war warning.” Hadn’t the Admiral considered this highly significant? His answer boomed: “I did not consider it an extraordinary message!”

Said Kimmel: “No reasonable man in my circumstances would have considered the war warning was intended to suggest … likelihood of an air attack. … [There was no] dereliction of duty on my part.” But his questioners drew out the fact that the day after the “war warning,” he had ordered depth bombing of any suspectedly hostile submarines. Admiral Kimmers temper began showing signs of wear.

By week’s end the hearing had made plain what history had demonstrated pitilessly many times before: commanders who would avoid suspicion and controversy must also avoid military disaster.